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I’m writing this blog entry while travelling on the train from Edmonton to Toronto. The journey should take just under 48 hours however we are running about four hours late so it’s going to be a bit longer.
After a winter filled with freezing temperatures, ice and snow, I finally left Canmore at the end of April. I really enjoyed my time living in the Canadian Rockies but it was time to get on the move again. After Christmas I started planning and saving for my big trip east across Canada.
In my last weeks in the Canmore, the weather did start to warm up enough for me to get sunburnt. We were lucky enough to decide to visit Drumheller on one of these rare warm days. Mark, my ever patient boss, offered to take me to explore Alberta’s badlands. Along for the ride was Mark’s son Lucas and Wayne, an Australian friend of mine. Drumheller is Canada’s dinosaur capital and home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. We visited the museum and saw all of the dinosaur bones and fossils found in this area. We then took a walk through an area which gave Drumheller the badlands name. Wind
and water cause the hillsides to erode leaving behind canyons filled with lots of small hills. All of the snow had gone when we visited but the area was still very dry and brown so it added to the badlands feel. We also visited some great hoodoos which are rock formations shaped by the wind to be natural columns. The highlight for me was seeing a gopher or prairie dog when we stopped to take some photos. On the way home we also saw some rocky mountain sheep on the outskirts of Canmore.
My first destination on my trip east was Jasper. I hired a car and drove from Banff to Jasper through the Icefield Parkway. It was snowing pretty heavily by the time I reached the Icefields Centre so I decided not to go to up to the icefield. By the time I reached Jasper, the snow has stopped but it was still pretty overcast. The next day was a little clearer so I decided to try to visit the Columbia icefield again. This time I was lucky and I had great views of the mountains. It was a interesting ride on the icefield buggy and we had
nice views of the glaciers coming off the icefield. On the icefield there is the only triple continental divide in the world - where rivers starting from the same place flow into three different oceans - North Saskatchewan to the Atlantic, Athabasca to the Arctic and the Columbia to the Pacific. I had heard some talk in the hostel about bears in the area so I rode around the town for a while looking for hungry grizzlies but unfortunately only saw some elk. I’m still desperate to see a bear in the wild before I leave Canada and I hope I’ll have the opportunity in the east.
From Jasper I drove to Edmonton which was a fairly boring drive on a twinned two lane highway through the prairies. Driving in Edmonton was an adventure but Google maps was very helpful and I didn’t get lost. I didn’t like Edmonton that much. It’s an industrial city without much character and is very North American. There are lots of roads and cars but no pedestrian streets and not many gardens. The areas I was staying in was meant to be one of the most picturesque but it just reminded me of
Lower Hutt. One of the big attractions in Edmonton is the West Edmonton Mall - the biggest mall in the world. It has two mini golf courses, two movie theatres with 15 cinemas, an ice rink, fun park with five rollercoasters, waterslide park, scuba and snorkelling lagoon and sea lion enclosure. And of course hundreds of shops and restaurants. It was all a little overwhelming and very tempting especially as I was trying not to spend money so I limited myself to a couple of tops and some essentials I needed for travelling. And I went to see a movie, the first one I had seen since I was in San Francisco for Christmas as there’s not movie theatre in Canmore.
On my last day in Edmonton, I had to return my hire car which was a bit of a mission as there was a fun run on in the city and it crossed the street where the car hire place was. At least I wasn’t in too much of a hurry and I got to watch the mounties in action directing traffic. After I finally returned the car, I walked through the central city to get a feel
for the city and made my way to the Alberta Legislature Building. The Legislature is where the government of Alberta sits and it surprisingly similar to that of British Columbia and also the Beehive. The proceedings are also very similar to that of the NZ government however in Alberta the Conservative government has a 85% majority so the politics are very different to NZ.
From Edmonton I was departing by train to Toronto. Due to a medical emergency, the train was delayed around two hours coming into Edmonton which gave me time to watch the Montreal Canadiens lose to the Philadelphia Flyers. Unfortunately the last Canadian team is now out of the Stanley cup (ice hockey).
Once on board the train, I was shown to my berth. During the day, there are two seats facing each other and at night, the seats are pulled together to create the lower berth and the upper berth is pulled down from the ceiling. I had an upper berth which was surprising comfortable, the only problem was that there is no storage so I had to sleep with my overnight bags. There were privacy curtains surrounding my berth so it was very cosy at night and I wasn’t too bothered by people walking by. As soon as I had claimed my bunk, I was shown to the dining car where they were waiting to serve our four course dinner. The meals have been great, breakfast is a choice of continental or four different cooked options, lunch consists of soup then one of four cooked options then cake or ice cream and dinner is soup, salad, one of four cooked options and dessert. We definitely haven’t gone hungry on this trip however the meal times are rather early. There are two sittings for lunch and dinner, the earlier is at 11am and 5pm and the later is at 12:30pm and 7pm. The majority of the other travellers on the train are aged over 70 and I think I am one of three people under 65 years old.
The first part of the trip was crossing the prairies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The landscape was flat and grassy. I was surprised how many houses and small towns were along the train track, there seemed to be a house every couple of kilometres. After Winnipeg, we hit the Canadian shield which is a huge area of rock which has been on the North American continent for millions of years. The landscape changed dramatically, it was very rocky with hundreds of lakes, fir and birch trees. It was amazing to think that the train part had been cut through the solid road over 100 years ago but workers with only the most basic of tools.
I finally arrived into Toronto at midnight, about four hours late. But the trip was definitely worthwhile as I got to see some interesting parts of Canada.
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MARCY
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Happy Travels
Glad your trip so far has been interesting- good informative writing- you could write a travel book. Where to next?